Sunday, 23 July 2017

The Mad Gasser of Mullingar?

In the autumn of 1917, a ghostly voyeur was
disturbing the sleep of the good people of Mullingar. The Freeman’s Weekly
Journal of 8 September 1917 reported:

Our Mullingar correspondent states that the
inhabitants of that town are considerably exercised in their minds by stories
of a spectral figure which roams the streets after dark. Opinion differs as to
who or what he is. Some hold that he is an escaped German from an internment
camp; others classify him as a wandering lunatic; and a superstitious section
does not hesitate to allude to him as “The Ghost.”

The stranger, who is tall and thin, and
dressed in grey, is never seen until darkness has fallen upon the town. Then
his pale countenance is seen gazing into ground floor windows, and his gaunt
form is to be dimly discerned hovering in the gloomiest corners. A number of
unimaginative policemen are now engaged in trying to “lay” this “ghost,” which
has annoyed the town for about ten days.

The Dundee Evening Telegraph also carried the
story:

A ghost is prowling about the precincts of
Mullingar, and the inhabitants thereof have got the shivers. Some think it is a
lunatic, and others believe it to be an escaped German prisoner. If it be the
latter, and an officer, you have Mr Churchill’s word that you need not salute
him.

However, when the Freeman’s Weekly Journal
returned to the story a few weeks later, it was because things had taken a
sinister turn.

The Mullingar apparition has reappeared, and
is no longer content with peering into cottage windows, but has forcibly
entered houses, and in one case came to grips with the occupier.

About midnight recently a man named Miller,
who resides in a cottage on the road at the corner of Mullingar Fair Green, was
awakened by the noise of somebody moving about, and on going to the next room
he was confronted by a powerful man, who had an open knife extended in his hand
in a threatening attitude. Mr Miller sprang upon him and succeeded in gripping
the arm of the man and deflecting the knife. A fierce struggle followed, and
the two rolled over in grips on the floor.

Meantime, Mrs Miller rushed out to the door
in her night attire and called loudly for help. On hearing her voice the
assailant let go of Mr Miller, who, whilst on the floor, was conscious of his
opponent using something in either a handkerchief or cotton wool which he
believes to have been chloroform, and which, at all events, had a pungent odour
and a somewhat stifling effect.

He describes the visitor as clad only in a
soldier’s khaki trousers, stockings, and shirt, and the reason he had divested
himself of the other portions of his clothing seems fully explained by the
discovery subsequently made of his means of effecting an entry. This was
through a small window protected by two iron bars, and which would only admit
the body of a man with great difficulty. The bars were found to have been torn
away, and Mrs Miller, it appears, as the intruder rushed past her in flying
from the house, saw him catch up from the ground outside the door a cap, coat,
and pair of boots.

On the same night, something later, it
appears, the house of a Mrs Rooney, an old woman who resides with her daughter
about forty yards from Miller’s – which is at an angle of the Fair Green and
not far from the military barracks – was also entered, but on the alarm being
raised the intruder made good his escape.

There was a lot going on in Ireland at this
time, so it’s highly likely that these events had quite a mundane explanation
that never got reported. However, the events in Mullingar do remind me of later events in Mattoon, Illinois [1], but on a very much smaller scale.